Doodle Dee, Doodle Doo
I grew up on “the island.” It has a name but locals don’t need to use it, there’s only one island. You can stay on the island, go off the island, go over the island, or go around it. Navigating these choices weren’t difficult, but for a busy young family getting off the island required more effort than the reward was worth. Loading up the car, crossing a steep almost-mile-long bridge, and (back then) idling through the tollbooth with outstretched arm and a book of blue perforated tickets, one flipped up and waiting to be plucked from the pad. It was easier to stay close to home, more pleasant. This place was an enclave from the commercial world, and the few businesses that operated on the island had explicit functions. Grocery store, gas station, pizza parlor, bank. Everything a young family needed was there, but no more, no less.
Next to the bank was a dollar store. I remember trips to the store as exciting odysseys into a world of play—in the eyes of a child the cheap odds and ends were brilliant rewards of colossal value. Shelf after shelf of shiny new toys, mine for the choosing. Like any finicky teenager I later came to hate the place for its convenience. I didn’t want my socks from the dollar store. I wanted them from a mall—a supposed place of fashion that reclusive islanders like myself rarely visited.
But the place had its glory day. My mother remembers our trips to the dollar store more vividly; I was a one-of-a-kind customer. After a trip to the bank (and a lollipop), my well-behaved siblings and I would ambush the shelves. Squirt guns, candy, trading cards, and doll accessories would fill the basket while I brazenly clutched my prize, prepared to defend my choice. It was the same thing every time. White paper and crayons. Sometimes a more ambitious me would choose the paints or markers, but I was desperate to keep our fully-stocked home overflowing with artists’ tools. My mother recounts a tearful, post-tantrum child being dragged from the store—the paper had been out of stock. I was devastated; it was a very specific sheet I had to have. The gall, of the old ladies behind the counter, to suggest lined notebook paper. It would not do for this child-Picasso.
For as long as I can remember my most precious time has been spent drawing and reading. An escape for a shy child, my reclusiveness into the worlds of paper and ink and words did little to advance my social skill. I was a bit weird, too shy to respond to simple questions, unprepared to interact with other kids. But patience—I had patience. The drawings were meticulously created, obsessed over, and bountiful. Page after page was filled with color and imagination; hour after hour spent alone in my own mind.
I don’t draw anymore, but don’t be sad. That avenue was fully explored; crayon became charcoal and acrylic paint, india ink, silkscreen. I found greater satisfaction and intellectual challenge in the more world of design, where the mouse is usually my tool. By now the rest of the world has found me and barged into my brain. I am still stunningly patient, still dwelling up there in my own mind, and I am still obsessed and consumed. But where articulation escaped me as a child I have found a voice and confidence.
Remnants of the dollar store-aided compulsion to draw still exist in the margins of my sketchbooks. An archive would reveal nonsensical scribbles between legitimate concepts and notes. They don’t mean a thing, they’re doodles. Unintelligible and insignificant, the doodles aren’t even of forms, they are straight lines, circles, and curly-cues. No shape is safe from the attentiveness of my pen.
Five months ago I wrote two words in my sketchbook, put a box around them, and then drew a line of slanted teardrops. The text is beside the point. Then I wrote more words, added a few more boxes for good measure, and packed in a hundred more tilted drops. It looked pretty. And then, for the first time ever, decided to do something with a doodle.
It’s not all that novel but the doodles now become postcards, mailed sporadically to my eight-year-old cousin. She saves them in a box, one side decorated with red-inked curlies or methodical dashes, the other with just a brief note. My play becomes her gift, and they are meaningful to her—they tell her she is special.
My cousin as a child is nothing like me as a child. She is wild and exuberant, teeming with personality, and popular. Each year I give her art supplies, not because her home doesn’t have enough, but because I have a nagging conviction it’s what every child wants. For some reason paper and crayons just seem like a really great gift.
Artwork: Penelope Dullaghan
